Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Welcome to Genzano di Lucania

WELCOME TO FRANK MENCHISE BLOG OF GENZANO DI LUCANIA, YOU ARE INVITED TO BROWSE AS LONG AS YOU LIKE.
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Welcome to our blog, Genzano it story
and this post, welcome to Genzano di Lucania
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Welcome to Genzano di Lucania
This is the oldest part of Genzano di Lucania town, as you can see it has been built on a high hill between two chasms; in the old times this was done for safety reasons.






In Southern Italy, as well in other parts of the world they have religious feasts. This statue here is The Madonna statue that is taken around town when there is this feast of the Madonna.











Welcome to Genzano di Lucania

Dear readers; let me welcome you again to read about my native town, as we all know every one of us is proud of our own heritage, and so am I of course and I am proud to say that  Genzano di Lucania, is my native town, because this is the town where I was born. So I hope that in this post I will be able to describe to you the best way possible my home town where I was born and where I lived when I was young, so that you may understand me better when I am talking about many other things in the future including my home town, my life story and those events that were taking place when I was young, which made me what I am today. Now apart what I have said, I hope also that I would be able to find some photos of my town on the Internet to show you as much as I can.
Now let me explain, just to make it easy to see what this hub is all about and what Genzano can offer to those that don’t know much about this part of the world, hereunder are some links, please point to the link and then click on the links as prompted by your computer, if you see a few of them, you may start to have the right opinion about this place.
Genzano di Lucania, Youtube link, I say it is an excellent video to start with.
For more information click on the links below:
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Genzano soccer field


Now what else I can say that would be of interest to other people in general. I suppose that we should look at those things that most people follow during their lives and one of these is sport. As we all know, in Italy one of the main sports that everybody follows is what we call here soccer, so most town have their soccer field, also Genzano di Lucania has its own soccer field, which the inhabitant would be proud to show you; of course there are lot of other things to see in Genzano, but let us start to show you some photos; as we all know Italian people love soccer, so, Genzano as far as I remember has had a soccer team, and today they have a proper soccer field as well. We need to say here that when I was a teenager there was not a proper soccer field yet, anyone that was interested in soccer had to wait after the wheat harvest to get the soccer field going for that season. After the wheat harvest in a field at the outskirt of the town they would flatten the ground level enough to play for that season. It was okay then just the same, because in Southern Italy in summer is usually very dry, so the soccer matches were on just the same, but there were times when a thunder storm would come and ruin the sporting event. I remember this because it happened to me when I was very young, we all had to run and find shelter wherever we could at the nearest houses in town, we got wet, but it was fun.

Old Genzano photos

Now let me show you an aerial photos of the oldest part of Genzano town: This first photo here shows you the oldest part of Genzano; anyhow one has to look at the history of the region to understand the way these old towns were built in the past. In the article shown in this link; Now let me show you an aerial photos of the oldest part of Genzano town: This first photo here shows you the oldest part of Genzano, which is very ancient and there are a few stories how this town was started, so we may have a couple of stories to tell how it came about; So, let me say this, in my later posts there will be a story or two written how this town was started from people living nearby perhaps in caves or other make shift dwellings.
Anyhow one has to look at the history of the region to understand the way that these old towns were built in the past. In this link shown here; The town I came from, there are a few things and a few photos showing what we mean.

About Genzano and about me

Now let me introduce myself who I am: My real name is Francesco Menchise and I migrated to Australia a very long time ago, but I have never forgotten my original home town of Genzano, therefore now as you can see I am writing my memories of my life and therefore also my home town. Now, since I am writing this article to talk about the town where I came from, I would appreciate very much if any of my countrymen (paesani Genzanesi) that come across this article would like to leave a comment, and also anyone with a family name Menchise I would appreciate if they leave a comment, since there are reasons to believe that all people in the world with their family name Menchise are originally from the town of Genzano di Lucania; so, come on let us hear from you all, I will appreciate it very much. I am sure that some of you who left Genzano old enough would remember thing like this feast, (festa della Madonna) See photos
In my life memories I will be writing several things about Genzano whenever the occasion arises, I would also be writing all those hearsay and stories that went around town while I lived in Genzano when I was young, perhaps what I am going to say here might very well surprise even a modern Genzanese person since thing have changed a lot in the last 50 years or so, therefore don’t be surprised if you learn something from me about my original home town of Genzano di Lucania in these articles.

Other stuff

Now that I have talked a bit about my native town of Genzano, let me tell you a bit more about myself and what I am going to write in these posts, you see I have already published a few articles, where I am writing about my memories and other things as well; you are all invited to check them out and here are the links, please click on the links below to view and read our (articles) hubs:

Genzano twin town

My dearer readers and Genzanesi folks I have to say that while I was looking for Genzano di Lucania on the Internet, I have found on the Internet also Genzano di Roma, which is a larger town and seems to be important in art, so allow me to introduce you to this artistic town including what I found on You tube videos, here is a link to see and enjoy ballet with the several links that are attached to it.
Anyhow I believe that I have said enough in this post about both Genzanos, so see you our next post, where we will be talking about, Genzano di Lucania history.
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Saturday, August 29, 2015

Genzano di Lucania, post

WELCOME TO FRANK MENCHISE BLOG OF GENZANO DI LUCANIA, YOU ARE INVITED TO BROWSE AS LONG AS YOU LIKE.
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Welcome to our blog, Genzano it
and this post, my post Genzano di Lucania
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My post Genzano di Lucania

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These is the old fountain called la Cavallina; it is one of the old place that everybody from Genzano would know about and remember it.








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Arial photo of Genzano, we are posting a few photos of Genzano, so that they will remind us of the town.








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The Madonna of Genzano church












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Monteserico castle, is just another place that reminds us of our town.









 My post Genzano di Lucania

Welcome to our post, Genzano di lucania
You are invited to read these memories of my home town;
So, let me welcome all those who would like to read these articles, perhaps some readers would like to read these posts just to remember the town that they came from, others would read them just because it is a new article and are curious of its content, whatever it is let us hope that it is interesting enough for you to read them.
Now let me explain the situation here, since I am an Italian born in this town of Genzano di Lucania, I suppose that most of my town people would have liked to see this article written in Italian, but that has not been possible for a couple of reasons, first of all because our computer programs are in English and therefore it would be hard to write in another language other than English, the other reason is that the English language has a very large audience, then there is also the fact that the Italians that reside in other countries are the most likely people that would read these articles, so, I am saying sorry to our Italian friends, I am sorry that my hub pages are written in English, but it is easier for me as I happen to be in Australia, however not only I am writing this blog in blogger about Genzano and this is the link; http://genzanoit.blogspot.com, you can visit it there is a lot more about this Genzano town written in it, we also are writing some of the stories of my life in our website, http://frankmenchise.com ,where you are welcome to visit it, as there is a lot more to read about Genzano and my life story.
Now let me introduce myself again in this post, so that my countrymen could know who I am, my name is, Francesco Menchise and I was born in Genzano di Lucania and lived there when I was young, So I would like to salute all those who remember me, since I remember most of you even today; greetings and all the best to you all. While I am writing this article I feel that I miss something and I wish I could see you all once again even if it is for a short while.
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We hope that in these posts we would be able to talk about all the interesting things of Genzano di Lucania and for those that don't know where Genzano di Lucania is, you will find a Google map here under to help you find it; here-under is also my welcome text and a few links about Genzano and all you have to do is click on these links to see their content; and other things. We wish you that our post brings to you joy and understanding and remembrance of Genzano di Lucania that is if you happen to come from this town and if you are not from this town just enjoy your reading anyhow.
Here are some interesting links:
Here under is another Video of a concert at this fountain
Luciano Mastrodonato
And again a feast of this Madonna showing it in the old town
Genzano di Lucania Festa Madonna 2011 (Paese Vecchio) - YouTube
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I believe that this post is already long enough for the people to read, so we plan to write another post soon, where we will continue to welcome you to our posts about Genzano and also our life story that we will be writing as we go on. So, see you in our next post, welcome to Genzano di Lucania. 

Signed by author, Frank M.  

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Genzano it story
Genzano di Lucania post
IS GOING TO BE CONTINUED;
Next time with, Genzano di Lucania history
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Some other useful links
http://diybrickwork.com
http://frankmenchise.com
http://manneedsgod.co.uk
Some of our hub links
 Australian houses in Brisbane, Australia affordable houses
DIY brickwork, Strage in Genzano di Lucania

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dEon5GA04Y
www.comune.genzano.pz.it/
Normans - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
www.sportinggenzano.it/
Travel Videos - Fountain cavallina, Genzano, Italy - The Compulsive ...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsPrg1ucmsQ
Where is Genzano di Lucania in Basilicata, Italy located?
Most interesting photos from Genzano di Lucania, Basilicata, Italy
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Thursday, August 13, 2015

Harvesting the very old ways

WELCOME TO FRANK MENCHISE BLOG OF GENZANO DI LUCANIA, YOU ARE INVITED TO BROWSE AS LONG AS YOU LIKE.
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This is how people harvested a long time ago.  

Welcome to our blog, Genzano it story
and this post, Harvesting the very old ways
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Dear readers, usually here we paste some photos that belong to this event, but unfortunately we are having difficulty to do that, so if you would like to see some of the photo that we had in mind, you have to go to this web address in hub pages, where the entire article is shown;  Farming today compared to the old way, I hope it works for you.

Harvesting the very old ways


Now, before we come to a close, because we want to compare the old ways of farming with today farming, we need to say how harvesting wheat was done before; here we need to say also that I have witnessed the last part of this old practice when I was young. You see, when I was young we were already using a horse drawn harvester, and it was very helpful; but there were people that had some very small holdings and we had one of these ourselves, so we had to use the old ways of harvesting our wheat for that small wheat field, because that was the only way to do it for one reason or another.

So, let me describe how harvesting was done in those old bygone days; at harvesting time strange as it may seem today, one could hire some specialized people that were good at using the sickle, these people usually went from town to town to do this seasonal harvesting job; we need also to explain that in Southern Italy because the terrain has different altitude the wheat reaches maturity at different times, this was helping these seasonal workers to have a longer span of work, now just to compare those very hard times with today times, I have to tell you that these workers were sleeping anywhere they could on a sack filled up with straws under a shelter if they could find one, as they could not afford anything else. In the morning they would get up early and wait in the town square hoping that somebody would hire them for the day.

Now let us say that we had a small plot about one acre and we could not use the harvester of those time, because it was not possible to go there, we would then hire four people and form a gang that could harvest one acre in one day and collect it in hips that would be later on taken on a cart to the farm house to be threshed one way or another.

In the old times anything that had grown in the field was collected, it needed to be collected for the people to survive, it was the only way because the fields did not produce as much as they do today, because they could not be cultivated as good as we do today. You see today we have the tractor to cultivate the fields and we have many types of fertilizer to help us grow more wheat, but let us go back to talk about old harvest times.

Wheat trashing the very old time

Now I suppose I have to say briefly how the older generations used to thresh their harvests, in order to collect all their produce. Now, let us suppose that it was only a few bundles of wheat to be threshed one could even extract the wheat by hitting them with a stick, but let us say that we had a cartful, or many cartful’s for that matter, then we had to use a different method, which is the way that most farm used in the very old times for centuries, so let me tell you how it was done.

I happen to know this procedure, because in the farms when I was young we were still using this method with smaller crops most likely broad beans, lentils, chick peas, linseed, and other farm produce, and the elder would always be telling us that this was the way that they used to collect their wheat as well and usually it took them a few months to collect all the season produce. So now let me describe this to you, so that we would be able to compare the great difference.

In order to do this, first of all we needed to prepare a piece of ground that is very solid and smooth, this could be achieved by stripping the old dry grass on a piece of land that had a large clay content, then wet it with a little bit of water to make it compact; once that was ready we would place our wheat or whatever was to be threshed and collected on this clean ground, then we would get our horses mule and donkeys whatever animals were available and drive them around and around until everything was threshed. Of course there was a lot more to say, but let us make it short otherwise it would become too boring.

Now, once the threshing was done we has to separate the produce from the straw and any other foreign matter, this was achieved by removing the straws from the top layer making sure that no produce was left with the straws, at the same time we would collect the bottom layer in a hip, once that was done we would have to clean that produce by using the wind, to take away the finer parts that were still mixed with the wheat or whatever it was, and there were many other things that we could use to get this wheat clean, by the end of the day we could have collected two or three hundred kilograms of produce.

In the very ancient times was even worse, see what they were using in the Medieval Times, here is a link to check out some ancient farm tools including the Flail and Winnowing Basket used to collect and clean wheat.


I hope that this gives the modern reader a view of how thing were done in the old times, so I do not want to say much more about how all this threshing and cleaning of the wheat was done, because even writing about it is boring today, but anyhow it needed to be done in those days, because that was the only way to collect our wheat to make bread and other things. Now, my dear reader’s do you see how hard was then even to collect wheat for ourselves.

I hope I have been able to write something that really sets up the great difference of the ways of life that we were living then and the ways of life that we are living now, for this I want you to compare and judge for yourself how much better off we are today.

To the young people who think that today life is hard, let me describe to you what I have witnessed when I was young, because then life really was harder then today, you see those days everybody had to find how to earn enough to feed themselves there were no handover from the government. So, the very poor people of those days were trying to collect anything they could to feed themselves.

So at harvest time this is what I have witnessed, I have seen old and poor people mainly old ladies go around the fields and pick up any ear of wheat that was left behind in the fields, one ear of wheat here and anther there until they had the strength, each day until harvest time was over and there was nothing else to collect; and I tell you what these poor people were happy if in the end they had collected enough ears of wheat that they could trash and clean themselves, perhaps they could have collected enough to make 50 to 100 kilos of wheat during harvest time and they were happy because, they could make bread from this wheat and not go hungry for a few months.

Now I hope that you see what I mean when I say that the youths of today don’t know anything about hard times?

Anyhow as you can see this is just another story of my life, which I am telling in Hub-Pages, and I am posting some links for the other stories here under, if you like to read them?

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Genzano it story
Farming the old way
IS GOING TO BE CONTINUED;
Next time with, framing the very old way
------------------------------ Some useful links
http://diybrickwork.com
http://frankmenchise.com
http://manneedsgod.co.uk

http://publicreligiousforum.yolasite.com
http://frank-nrwo.yolasite.com
http://menfranconewworldorder.yolasite.com
http://myreligioustheory.yolasite.com 

Some hub links
 Australian houses in Brisbane, Australia affordable houses
DIY brickwork, Strage in Genzano di Lucania

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dEon5GA04Y
www.comune.genzano.pz.it/
Normans - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
www.sportinggenzano.it/
Travel Videos - Fountain cavallina, Genzano, Italy - The Compulsive ...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsPrg1ucmsQ
Where is Genzano di Lucania in Basilicata, Italy located?
Most interesting photos from Genzano di Lucania, Basilicata, Italy
 
 
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Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Farming the old way

WELCOME TO FRANK MENCHISE BLOG OF GENZANO DI LUCANIA, YOU ARE INVITED TO BROWSE AS LONG AS YOU LIKE.
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Welcome to our blog, Genzano it story
ant this post, farming the old way
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This is similar harvester machine that we were using when I was young
 
This is a small trashing machine, compared to the trashing machine that we would hire to trash our wheat and other cereals.








Farming the old way

Dear readers, this post is the continuation of our previous post; farming today compared to the old way; in order to explain how farming was done at the time when I was young, what we are going to write here-under is the way of farm life that was going on then, we know that things have changed for the better since then, as we have already written in our previous post, because of the tractor and new farming machinery that have come out since then, all this progress has been due to the modern industrial progress, but when I was young these advanced machinery were not available yet, of course there were some, but they were a lot less advanced farming machine that could make farming easy, so we had to do most things the old ways, so let me tell you how life was in the farms of southern Italy in the early fifties and earlier.

It is a well-known fact that in those times and even now, there were/are two times during the year, when in the farms everybody would be really working hard and working very long hours; one of this was/is sowing time and the other is harvest time, let us start with sowing times. When I was young the working day at sowing time would start two hours before dawn, because we had to make the horses, mules and other animals ready for working in the fields, we had to feed them and water them as well, it had to be done in such a way that everything should be made ready in order to go into the fields at daybreak.

At that time of the year in the morning it would be very cold and there are lots of frosty days, so in the morning the outside temperature could be around zero or below, it is very hard then to harness the horses to the plough as everything one touches is so cold; but then when one gets going it is not so bad, because walking in the fields holding the plough in one hand and guiding the horses with the other hand is hard work and it makes one warm. This type of very hard work at sowing time goes on for about a month if the weather is good and perhaps it could be longer than a month. When the sowing is done then everything slows down again, but we had still to look after the farms’ animals and do other farming chores; see this article My farm life continues, in this hub, in a sub article we describe what we did after sowing our wheat and during the winter.

Anyhow, now that we have said what we did in the farms at sowing time, let us talk about harvest time, since this is the busiest time in the farms, because harvest time is when the farmers collect the fruits of their hard labour that they have done during the year, so there is no time to waste at harvest time, therefore this was and still is the most hectic time of the year for all the farmers, and it is a very worrying time too for the farmers as well, you see if something goes wrong all their work goes down the drain for the whole year, so to speak. Here we are talking about mostly how things were run in the farms when I was young.

Now let us say a few things about today farming, especially about wheat farming, because wheat is one of the main important produce that we need from farming, as we have already said at the beginning of this article. With wheat we make bread and pasta and other bakery products, therefore it is perhaps the most important farm produce that we use. So, let us compare what is changed in wheat farming since I was young:

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Wheat harvest in the fifties

The following description is the way of wheat harvest time in the fifties when I was young. When I was young we had already a horse drawn harvester that was helping us, this early harvester was able to cut the wheat plants and tie them in bundles, so we were already half way down the track of progress, as this machine saved us a lot of work, because we did not have to harvest by hand. Anyhow, at this time of the year everybody in the farm works hard and for very long hours, it is very hot at this time of the year and everything is very dry. We get up very early in the morning, we get the horses ready for working by feeding them and watering them, then we harness the horses and set them to pull the harvester, and off we go in the fields for another day of hard work, if everything goes well, we might be able to go over a ten acre field just in one day with this harvester. The harvester needs two people to get it working, one drives the horses and another regulate the harvester, the harvester goes around the field and leaves these bundles of wheat or other cereal, whatever has been sown in the field. Now these bundles of wheat will be collected in hips around the field from other people as soon as possible, the hips of these bundles of wheat are made is such a way that if it rains the rain would run off easily, these hips of wheat will be collected later on when we finish with the harvester, perhaps in a week or two, we will go back to the fields with a cart to take everything on a special plot near the farm house, where the trashing machine will be hired and set.

When we collect and cart everything to the farm house, we work very long days, we get up before 4 am, but we have a break of two or three hours at lunchtime because it is too hot to do anything, then we go back to work and between real work and looking after the animals we finish at dusk around 8 pm, after that we only have to feed the horses: this sort of work goes on for more than a month and sometimes up to two months, with no breaks at all seven days a week. Everybody in the farm works to their maximum and they are very tired, they are also very worried about the possible fire hazard, and also of any thunder storms at this time of the year, since anyone of these happenings can destroy the whole crop, and a whole year of hard work could go up in smoke. So we all would be waiting for the trashing machine to come and finish our harvest.

When some famer did not have a lot of wheat to trash, they could use a place in common with other farmers, so that, the trashing machine would not have to be set several times. The trashing machine that were around and we would hire together with other farmers came with a large crew, because it was a much larger machine than the one shown in this post, it had a crew of about twenty people, it was a very interesting time when we were trashing our own wheat, oats, barley, etc. Because we were anxious to see how much wheat and other product we had made.    

Now there were many other things that I would be able to tell you, but I better not just to make it short; but here I would like to say that when one goes through these life experiences in the farm one knows that it is really hard life farming, but since this is the only way to grow these things for food, we the farmers keep working in our farms to feed the rest of the community.

So we feel that it would be right if the rest of the community should be thanking us for all the hard work that we have done, but it does not happen that way because, even when we are working our guts out, and while we are doing that we are becoming dull, the rest of the community does not care and they label us as dull people, just because we are farm people, but we did our part of hard work for our own benefit and also for the benefit of the entire town community.

This is how life was then in the small farms of Southern Italy. Now this town people attitude as I have said above, plus some very lean years when we hardly could survive and also because we had only a very small farm and it would have been hard to expand was one of the reasons why I migrated to Australia. But anyhow let us continue and describe how harvesting was done the very old way, so that we could compare it to today’s living.

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Genzano it story
Farming the old way
IS GOING TO BE CONTINUED;
Next time with, framing the very old way
------------------------------ 
Some useful links
http://diybrickwork.com
http://frankmenchise.com
http://manneedsgod.co.uk

http://publicreligiousforum.yolasite.com
http://frank-nrwo.yolasite.com
http://menfranconewworldorder.yolasite.com
http://myreligioustheory.yolasite.com 

Some hub links
 Australian houses in Brisbane, Australia affordable houses
DIY brickwork, Strage in Genzano di Lucania

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dEon5GA04Y
www.comune.genzano.pz.it/
Normans - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
www.sportinggenzano.it/
Travel Videos - Fountain cavallina, Genzano, Italy - The Compulsive ...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsPrg1ucmsQ
Where is Genzano di Lucania in Basilicata, Italy located?
Most interesting photos from Genzano di Lucania, Basilicata, Italy
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